Ati Radeon HD 4870 Power Connector Problem?
I bought the 4870 card. But I don`t have a psu with 6 pin power cables. I have a 500 W smps that ends with 4 pin plugs (the old style molex ends). Can I run the card with my current system? I don`t know how to. The installation guide says that it would make a bad connection through the `two 4-pin to one 6-pin power cable converter`. Will it run or do any any damage to the card if I do connect via the power cable converter?
And since I have limited molex ends (just two free plugs), I can connect only to one of the connectors on the graphics card.
Comments
According to this:
http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonhd4800/requireme...
ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 System Requirements
PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connectors recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)
I think your best bet is to get a different power suppy which EXCEEDS the power requirements and connectors required for the card. I agree with the installation guide that pulling 75 Watts from a single Molex may do damage (total of 150 Watts). This is IDLE power, not peak, so you may end up doing close to 300 watts off two power connectors. The Molex connectors are designed to power on devices like a hard disk or DVD writer (5 - 10 Watt range). so you can see, the Molex is not designed to do what a 6 Pin 12 Volt connector is designed to do. I would advise you to spec out a new power supply with the right adapters or risk damage to your video card.
750 watt might be a little low but it should still run to a point. Which sounds like it is running to a point. I would suggest grabbing a 900W+ But getting a 1000W+ if the min suggests it is the smartest thing to do. Honestly 850W will probably be enough there would be no harm in grabbing a higher wattage PSU. Now those temperatures on the other hand could be decent or really bad depending on how you look at it. They are not good though overall. Decent at best. First of all are those temperatures idle or load? Idle is just sitting at the desktop doing almost nothing after turning on the computer. And load is after 10-15 mins of high quality gaming. If they are idle temps then I would be worried for sure. If there load then you should be fine. but the higher the temperature the worse the performance , the less longer the card will last , and the greater chance for graphic card failure etc. I have over 9 fans in my case setup. So my graphic card get to about 65 at full load. They idle around 40 though sometimes lower. Some graphic cards can and will reach 100 degrees Celsius its even happened to me for about 1 minute before I took the card back after realizing it was either broken , faulty or way over powered for my old computer case. edited-- Back 7 years ago with my old PC. I still had lots of experience with computers and graphic cards. So I was running a program to check temperature on the first day I got my new card. I was worried about it being a little high. When I saw it was bouncing between 97-101 degrees I though. Dam this program is broken. So I opened my other program and it was reading the same thing. I was playing doom 3 on high quality at the time. Then I thought dam the video card's temperature sensor is broken. Then I touched the side of my computer case and it was warm. And my case has never been warm or anywhere close to it before. Normally its freezing cold while I game. And it was accually warm like human skin. 10 mins later my video card was back in its packaging.
these are the requirements for the 4870...
System Requirements 500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express power connectors recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode)
Power Connector 2 x 6 Pin
your cutting it close w/the 500w psu...unless it is a extremely good one like a ozc,corsair,antec etc....if it cheap, which it sounds like becuz of the lack of 6 pin power connectors you need a new psu...
if you wanna buy a psu i would recommend a corsair 550tx 550w or a 600w ocz modular psu..
corsair 550w----http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
ocz 600w------http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
both of those will run that easily....i have the ocz with everything oced and has not missed a beat....they also have the right connections you need for the 4870...both under 100.00 bux
Scott
I don't believe that to be accurate
very interesting question